Advice From the Married Side – Real Brides Advice From Their Wedding Day

This afternoon it’s time again to dish out a healthy dose of wedding planning advice in our monthly ‘Advice from the Married Side’ feature. I have so many amazing real weddings on the blog and for each one I feature I ask the couple a number of questions, one of these questions being advice for other couples. Sometimes the answers get lost amongst the pretty pictures, so each month I bring you a selection of these brides (and grooms) words of wisdom! I hope there will be something amongst these experiences that help you while planning your own wedding……….Happy Planning!

(Photo credit: Mark Newton Weddings – Full Wedding HERE)

General Advice

• A wedding doesn’t have to cost a bomb, the focus is the marriage not the wedding day.
• Don’t sweat the small stuff. Things will go wrong but no one will even notice.
• Don’t compromise on something you are really passionate about.
• Wear comfortable shoes – I bought some nice flip flops to change into so I was able to dance and wander around freely!
• Sit down together and agree your priorities early on… we wanted a relaxed festival wedding, which made it easy to save money by dropping things we weren’t bothered about, like a wedding cake or expensive clothes.
• Also don’t be nervous as everyone is there for you on the day which is a really special thing!
• Being surrounded by friends and loved ones is what it’s all about, everything else really is secondary.
• Invest in a good photographer!
• Use Pinterest as it’s amazing!

(Photo credit: Paul Joseph Photography – Full wedding HERE)

Planning

• In regards to planning I just say have a good team around you … whether it be your mother, best friend, sister, or wedding planner. My wedding coordinators were so very helpful in helping me to conceptualize what I wanted. They weren’t afraid to tell me something was going to look bad or weird which I really appreciated.
• Having a planner is great because someone you can rely will be there keeping things moving.
• For planning: Make sure you have a good plan with options in case things change and a flexible time frame to allow for things to overrun. This means you’ll be less stressed.
• Enjoy the wedding planning – it is very easy to get wrapped up in the stresses of planning a wedding but make sure you take time out to enjoy each other’s company and have date nights where you don’t talk about the wedding!

(Photo credit: Emma Lucy Photo – Full wedding HERE)

Making the Day Personal to You

• I will always advise couples to be true to themselves. This is YOUR wedding day. Make it personal.
• Don’t stress, there’s no need to spend lots of money to have your perfect day, don’t let others stress you out, make it personal and about you and if you wanna have a rocking reception choose your own music don’t leave it up to a DJ.
• Be true to who you are, do what you both want, even if it means breaking rules. I was constantly told “well brides should be doing this and that” or “why haven’t you done this?” , “you can’t have 6 best men” “bridesmaids choosing their own dresses??” but when guests turn around and say they have never felt so much love at such a beautiful wedding, then we must have done something right.
• Don’t stress about what others do or what you think you should do. It will be the best day of your life so keep it simple and personal – filled with all of your favourite things and people. Try and relax and not worry about other people.
• Don’t feel you have to do what everyone else does, as we didn’t, and we feel it is important to create a wedding that is about you as a couple and not about what you feel a wedding should be like.
• Have fun while you are preparing and don’t get too caught up in what other want you to have. It’s your day and the most important thing is you are marrying the person you love, no one will notice the things you didn’t get time to do.

(Photo credit: Katya Nova Photography  – Full wedding HERE)

Getting Organised

• If you’re paying anything in cash, make sure it’s counted for on exchange so there are no mis-understandings
• Try and do as much as you can in advance – I didn’t realise how long it would take to sort out all of my bridesmaid dresses and found it very stressful towards the end!
• Really think about your guest list – it’s amazing how quickly it all adds up! If you have a limit stick to it. We tried to limit it to people we have seen in the past two years however saying that we invited some very old friends.
• Put some contingency cash in the budget for the things you forget to list out initially… if you’re better at planning than we were, then you’ll have extra cash for the honeymoon!
• Make lists, we loved writing lists and found that they really helped.
• We just sat down and talked about what were the most important things to use and we decided on making the day as relaxed and fun as possible, so that’s what we focused on.

(Photo credit: Andy Li Photography – Full wedding HERE)

On The day

• For the day itself I say just try to stay chill and keep everything in perspective. There is no such thing as a “perfect” day so just enjoy your day and try not to let it go by without looking around and taking it all in.
• My biggest advice for the wedding itself would be to enjoy the day. Take the time to remember the little things. Spend time with your new spouse. The day goes so quickly it’s unbelievable!
• You can’t control everything on the day so you’ve got to relax once it arrives.
• It’s easy to get diverted off as so many people to talk to and who want your attention but this is your day, to celebrate being together so make sure you enjoy those moments.
• Having an excellent master of ceremonies to keep everything moving, fun and energetic.
• We would say try not to over worry about schedules on the day itself, which is what we did, but on hindsight, on the day everything just comes together and flows and your too busy enjoying yourselves and being with everyone that you don’t actually need to be worrying about anything else.
• Plan into the day, some time where the two of you can just stop to take it all in.

(Photo credit: Captiv8 Photography – Full wedding HERE)

I hope you found these pieces of advice helpful. If you are already married is there anything you would like to add ? Was there anything in these words of wisdom that has resonated with you?

Is there something you would particularly like to ask me  for advice? any questions just email me [email protected]